The Charlotte News
Thursday, October 6, 1949
FOUR EDITORIALS
Site Ed. Note: The front page reports that at the President's 200th press conference in 234 weeks in office, he said that he could not answer whether the Soviets would be more amenable to atomic control in the wake of their explosion of an atomic bomb but that the proposal of the U.S. regarding control was one of the most noteworthy arms control proposals in history. He doubted that the Soviets would make proposals acceptable to the U.S. He also said that he was confident that the Army would eventually reach full integration of all races.
The Navy suspended Captain John Crommelin from duty and denied to Congress that morale of Naval officers and men was in bad shape. Captain Crommelin, who was subject to court martial for disloyalty, had said he believed Navy morale poor because of unification and had released Navy documents critical of defense policies. Secretary of the Navy Matthews said that he believed morale to be generally good. The President had ordered Secretary Matthews to get to the bottom of the matter of whether the Navy was being treated fairly under unification.
The U.S., through Ambassador Kirk in Moscow, sent a stern diplomatic note to Russia protesting the "shocking" mistreatment of Americans who strayed into the Soviet zone of East Germany and saying that it expected the Soviet officials responsible to be punished. It referred specifically to two American college students who inadvertently had entered the Russian zone while bicycling and had been detained for eight weeks. It also cited the case of an American Army private who escaped September 16 from an East German prison, following ten months of captivity under "brutal and uncivilized conditions".
The President signed the 1.3 billion dollar military aid program bill into law, as well as a 5.8 billion dollar foreign aid appropriations bill. The Marshall Plan appropriation in the latter bill was for 3.7 billion, with the remainder for Greece, Turkey, the Western zones of Germany, Austria, Japan, and the Ryukus.
The tendered resignation of French Premier Henri Queurille was accepted by President Vincent Auriol, after the Premier's coalition Government had run into problems over the Socialist Party's wage demands for the workers versus wage and price controls imposed by the Government. His Government had held together for 13 months, the longest of any postwar French Government.
The Senate Agriculture Committee approved 9 to 3 a flexible farm price support bill, originally introduced by Senator Clinton Anderson, former Secretary of Agriculture, and said it would come before the Senate for debate the following day.
In St. Louis, former DNC chairman and Postmaster General Robert Hannegan died of a heart attack at age 46. Mr. Hannegan had sold his interest in the St. Louis Cardinals the previous winter out of health concerns over high blood pressure. He retired from his Government post and as DNC chair in November, 1947 to form a syndicate to purchase the Cardinals. He had appeared in Kansas City the previous Thursday at a testimonial dinner for new DNC chairman William Boyle.
Trustees of the AMA said that the organization was being investigated by the antitrust division of the Justice Department and issued a protest of the action, that FBI agents were searching AMA records at its Chicago headquarters.
In Louisville, Ky., Col. Matt Winn, "Mr. Kentucky Derby", died at age 88 after being ill for several weeks. He was president of Churchill Downs and director of the Derby, had seen all 75 of the annual races, had observed Ponder win the race the previous May. He had been proud that the Derby never missed a year of running, even through two world wars.
In Pittsburgh, UMW president John L. Lewis said that he would attend the Friday meeting called by Government mediator Cyrus Ching to discuss settlement of the coal strike with operators, regarding nonpayment of contributions to the UMW welfare fund by some operators since the contract had expired on July 1, causing UMW to suspend payments to miners from the fund. The acceptance of the invitation appeared to bode well for settlement.
Gas workers struck in Milwaukee, Wis., and Painesville, O., and so the cities and area counties were without gas.
In Shamokin, Pa., the bodies of two dead coal miners, trapped since the previous day in a flooded independent anthracite mine, were recovered.
In Middlesex, N.C., 30 miles east of Raleigh, a school bus jammed with 70 students wrecked, taking the lives of at least six pupils and injuring fifteen, one not expected to live. Brambles and weeds hung over a dirt road at the scene, obscuring vision at a curve approach to a narrow bridge where the bus sideswiped an ice truck and then rolled 150 feet. Efforts to get the Highway Department to clear the curve had gone unheeded. The bus had seats for 42. The school was supposed to be assigned four buses but had only three.
In the vicinity of Mount Mitchell, N.C., an Air Force C-47 transport, with nine men aboard, which had taken off from the Air Force base at Greenville, S.C., was believed to have crashed, and a search was underway. It was a day overdue for its destination at Brookley Air Base in Mobile, Ala. Residents near Mount Mitchell had heard a crash the previous morning.
In Montreat, N.C., six missing college girls of Montreat College who had been on a brief after-supper hike to Greybeard Mountain and became lost in a sudden fog and ensuing darkness, were found after they had spent the night on wet ground with only two raincoats among them. At dawn, they had been able to make their way back and met searchers along the trail.
You girls was lucky you didn't get
eat by a b'ar
In Detroit, a welder at a car factory was being held on assault charges after another welder had heated his seat with his welding torch to watch him jump, whereupon the victim of the gag clobbered the practical joker with a ball peen hammer, landing him in the hospital in serious condition, unable to give a statement. The winner in the friendly game of dare was yet to be declared. Was it oxyacetylene or arc?
In other sports news, in Yankee Stadium, after five innings in the second game of the World Series, the Brooklyn Dodgers led 1-0 after Jackie Robinson hit a double and Gil Hodges, a single. That would be the final score, knotting the Series at one game apiece.
The first chapter of the serialized novel by Rob Eden, Christie Takes Over, appears on page 5-A. You don't want to miss reading that, word for word, until all the sentences and paragraphs blend together unerringly in a single piece of startlingly esoteric literature.
On the editorial page, "National Newspaper Week" provides the slogan for the week: "Freedom Goes Where the Newspaper Goes", and stresses that a free press could exist only in a free nation, that totalitarian nations suppressed the free press. Part of that freedom was the right of the people to know and have access to unbiased information about their government and their affairs, not just the right of the publisher to publish.
Is that clear, Fox News?
"Mobilization Plan Needed" tells of Bernard Baruch suggesting that the Congress pass proposed laws for emergency mobilization in the event of attack so that the laws could be immediately implemented by the President and joint action of Congress. The piece thinks it a necessary action to avoid the unnecessary delays experienced at the start of World War II, especially with the Soviet Union now in possession of the atomic bomb.
"Legal Aid Panel" tells of the Mecklenburg Bar Association starting a new experiment to provide attorneys for indigent families in civil matters. A caseworker of the Family & Children's Service Bureau and the Red Feather agency would screen applicants and determine who qualified for free legal services, then supply lawyers from a volunteer panel. The piece thinks it a good idea to foster provision of legal services for the indigent.
"In Terms of Billions" tries to put in perspective from analogues supplied by Automotive News the prospect of a 45 billion dollar budget for 1950. One example offered was that if every homeowner in the country sold their homes, the total proceeds would amount to 30 billion dollars, enough to run the Government in 1950 for eight months.
It concludes with a quote from FDR in 1932 that a Government could run a deficit for a year but a habit of such would land it in the poorhouse, just as with an individual family. The Government, it points out, had been engaging in annual deficit financing since 1932 in every year save two, and so the implications were left for the reader to ponder.
A piece from the Wall Street Journal, titled "Let John Do It", reports of a group of Senators planning to propose a measure to "stabilize" the coal industry. It thinks that it was better for John L. Lewis and UMW to stabilize coal, as such stabilization by the Government in Britain had only led to nationalization.
It believes that the coal industry could become a memory faster through Mr. Lewis's action than through Government action. "Once the coal industry has joined the dodo, Mr. Lewis will pass with it. Not so a Government bureau; 'stabilizing' something that does not exist is just the kind of job the Government would like most."
Drew Pearson tells of Walter Reuther, president of the UAW, having delayed resolution of the pension fund dispute with Ford for a full week after Ford had agreed to ten cents per hour as a contribution to the fund, so that he could make it appear to the workers that he had waged a hard-fought battle on their behalf, thus told Ford that he would have to issue a strike threat for one week.
Former Senator Joseph Ball of Minnesota, defeated in 1948 by Hubert Humphrey, was now a lobbyist for the Association of American Ship Owners. But unlike some lobbyists who earned as much as $50,000 per year, he only received $8,000 per year. The Association, however, had managed to place their former lobbyist as assistant counsel of the House Merchant Marine & Fisheries Committee, and he now received $8,800 as a salary.
Big businesses, including Chrysler, U.S. Steel, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Sears, and Republic Steel, were contributing heavily to the Small Business Economic Foundation and the National Small Businessmen's Association, lobbying groups ostensibly for small business. Congressman Wright Patman, a champion of small business, had exposed the practice.
Marquis Childs tells of the President having a stock answer for questions regarding any changes in policy in light of the Soviet detonation of an atomic bomb: that the military planners had calculated that eventuality into their assumptions all along and, as a result, no changes were necessary. Military planners resented the counter that such assumptions were based on the Russians not having the bomb before 1952. They corrected that the assumption for 1952 was a Russian stockpile, still a viable assumption, not mere development of the bomb.
The target date for completion of a North American radar network was 1952.
But military planners also believed that more urgent action was now required in three areas: acceleration of construction of the radar network; civil defense throughout the nation, especially regarding the threat of individual suicide bomber squadrons and internal Communist sabotage; and increased and improved atomic production.
On the diplomatic side, an interim agreement with Russia was desirable until a long-term agreement could be formulated regarding control and inspection of atomic energy.
A book had recently been published, Operation Survival by William Hessler, in which the foreign affairs expert posited that there was no single method by which to achieve peace and security. Mr. Childs regards the work as essential reading for every member of Congress and everyone else concerned with America's position in the world.
James Marlow discusses the changes in benefits and coverage in the proposed Social Security law, passed by the House and set for action in the Senate in 1950. Presently, for instance, the range of benefits for individuals was between $10 and a maximum of $45 per month, whereas under the new law, that range would be increased to between $25 and $64. Spouses of breadwinners would continue to receive half the benefits. Survivors of a deceased spouse would have their share increased from half to three-quarters of the dead spouse's benefits. He provides several other specific changes in benefits but does not cover the new categories of recipients included in the bill.
A letter writer finds Senator Robert Taft to be considered "sincere" despite a host of mistakes and poor judgments through the years, which he proceeds to list.
A letter writer urges contributions to meet the goal of raising $25,000 for the Spastics Hospital Center.
A letter from the editor of The Fort Mill Times corrects a piece appearing October 3 by Tom Fesperman of The News in which it was indicated that Mecklenburgers spent only $7,000 for liquor purchases in Fort Mill, S.C., after ABC control had been implemented in September, 1947, compared with $17,000 per quarter in the pre-ABC days. He says that the actual figures for purchases by Mecklenburgers remained in the millions, that the figures related were taxes provided to Fort Mill as its share of the total State tax revenue from gross sales by local stores.
Regardless, the point was made, that sales of liquor in Fort Mill to residents of Mecklenburg County were much smaller under ABC.
A letter from the vice-president of the A & P grocery store chain thanks the newspaper for its recent editorial regarding the Justice Department's antitrust suit against A & P. He thanks the newspaper for supporting A & P policies, aimed at keeping food prices low for the consumer.
A pome appears from the
Atlanta
Journal, "In Which An Uptilted Nose
"Adding to life's uncouth disgraces
Paring nails in public places."
As well, putting holes
In pretty faces.
Framed Edition
Links-Date — Links-Subj.